The Nature Conservancy and the American Wind Wildlife Institute (AWWI) announced an upgrade to the AWWI Landscape Assessment Tool, the state-of-the art wind-wildlife GIS mapping tool that they have jointly created. The tool is designed to help wind energy developers with early screening for possible wildlife and habitat impacts. Users can now display Web-based maps drawn from more than 700 data layers, including land use and ownership, the potential distribution of endangered and threatened species, and other relevant wildlife and habitat data. The tool is intended to be used by wind energy companies as they undertake preliminary "Tier 1" assessments of potential sites as recommended in the Land-Based Wind Energy Guidelines recently issued by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.